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A gift from the gut. Support crowdfunding projects for a healthier Christmas

Take an “asset light” approach to gift giving this year and support healthcare innovation at the same time.
Maybe you hate the mall or you’ve waited until the last minute or you just don’t want to give any trinkets this year. Pick one of these projects and let your loved one know this gift is straight from the gut.

American Gut

This project was tailor made for either the self-quantifer or the hypochondriac in your life. Buy a share in AmericanGut and you’ll receive a swabbing kit. You send back a sample and then can compare the microbes in your gut to those in the guts of thousands of other people around the world. The goal is to find the diet that best suits your gut’s personality. $99 gets you one DNA extraction kit, good for one stool sample, skin sample, or oral sample. Spend $180 and you can share the experience. Kits are scheduled to ship in early January.

uBiome

uBiome is a similar project but more focused on chronic disease. The team is building a database of gut profiles to look for links between microbes and illness. For $69, you get an early adopter kit and for $79 you get a kit and a t-shirt. Estimated deliver is May. uBiome is much closer to its $100,00 goal than American Gut is to its $400,000 goal. Both are flexible funding campaigns, meaning they will receive any money donated regardless of whether they meet the overall goal.
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By Veronica Combs

I was the editor in chief at MedCityNews.com. I started writing and editing in the print world and joined a dotcom right before the 2000 crash. I was at TechRepublic/CNET/BNET for 7 years.
Health was more interesting to me than the latest version of Windows, so I left for a startup tracking prescription drug news.
A year later, MedTrackAlert was acquired by HealthCentral, so I shifted to audience research. The fun of daily news and interviewing smart people brought me to MedCity News in February 2012.Visit website | More posts by Author